How many partners is too many?

Do you have views on this question?  Is the number different for a man than for a woman?  If so why?

And do we mean how many partners “at once” or in the course of a lifetime?

See there’s a conversation going on over at a friends blog.  I’d usually name who but I don’t know if she would be offended by my linking to her from here so I’m erring on the side of caution.

(Blog-friend,  if you drop by here somehow and are quite happy for the link let me know and then consider it done.)

Anyway…

The question being asked was “how many partner’s are too many?”

It made me laugh a bit.  First because the conversation concerned a friend of her’s who has fallen head over heels for a new man.  So the friend and her new fella have the “numbers” conversation.  You know…the “how many have you slept with?”  

And this friend was a bit freaked because her new man has had 20 partners.  She thought this didn’t fit the image she had of him.  She thought it was rather a lot.

My reaction was “20?  that’s not many?”

So how many is too much?

My husband and I happened to count the other day just the number of partners we had since we got together!  I’m not going to tell you the number. 

But it got me thinking.  Do number’s really matter?

Surely it’s attitudes that are more important?

I person could have had one lover but treated them like crap.  Does that mean they are okay because the number is low?

Given that few people are expected to be virgins on their wedding night (and thank heavens that’s the case) does a big number or a little number really mean so much?

One of the things I have found from being in an open relationship is how much you can grow as a person through being intimate with someone else.

I have a kind of awkward to explain attitude towards sex but I’ll try my best.

On the one hand.  It’s just a pleasurable act.  It feels good.  Good sex feels great.

On the other it is a big deal.  I could even say almost spiritual.  Its the closest you can physically get to another human being and that is pretty awesome.  Add orgasms into the equation (which I would inevitably endeavour for) and it gets even more incredible.  The perceived connection is intense.  Whether you have known that other person for five years or five minutes.

What I guess I’m trying to say is…

It can be as meaningful or as meaningless as you decide it to be.

The only real difference between polyamory and monogamy for us as a couple is that we have made a decision that there is so much more to our marriage than just sex.

There are many ways my husband or I could betray our marriage but for us having sex with someone else isn’t one of them.

That’s not to say that our previous sexual experiences aren’t in anyway important to our marriage.  They are.  Each sexual encounter in a persons life can bring baggage as well as fond memories. 

But the way I see it, so long as my friends new couple realise that whatever their numbers its their whole life experience that has made them who they are. 

And that includes their sexual history. 

So maybe they should stop worrying about the numbers and just embrace that as part of the person they’ve fallen in love with?

Of course…if she means how many partners are too many all at the one time?

Well that’s probably whole post in itself.
Technorati Tags: sex, marriage, love, relationships, polyamory, swinging, sexuality, life

Epilogue

So that was that.

I picked up the pieces of my life.

DH had to learn to cope with his boss being on not too great terms with him.

Things were tough. It was a horrible time but we got through it.

I was diagnosed in September as having Bipolar Disorder.

Given my mental health this year we haven’t done any more swinging.

Well, DH has played occasionally with a gay couple he is very good friends and I’m glad to say that I had absolutely no icky feelings about this.

And it seemed to help him feel sparky again.  Talking about that afterwards he really had that twinkle in his eyes that I love so much.

Our relationship is good again.

As for DH and Matt. Their work relationship remained cool but professional, much to DH’s credit.

Matt emailed me months later.  Just a regular…”we have changed our email address”.

I responded only to let him know that I was surprised to receive it, given that he never wanted to speak to me again and therefore was going to assume it had been sent in error.

He replied again that he had noticed my name when he sent it to his email contacts “but thought it would be churlish” to miss me out.

WTF?

I didn’t email back.
However.

The reason all of this is on my mind again.

DH was away at his work’s annual conference at the start of the year.

Matt is no longer his boss.

They got on okay.  DH says they were “cordial.”

But he has been back up to the office a few times since then and it seems their friendship has been rekindled.

By time maybe.

Time and space.

I know DH has missed his friend very much.

I feel guilty in the part I played in screwing that up.

I never meant for anything bad to happen.

And so last week the subject “of all that business” was alluded to by Matt during a cigarette break.

He apparently told DH that he felt kind of bad the way it had all ended. That he had planned to invite us up to try and smooth things over but then heard through DH’s new boss that I was “unwell” and so he decided he didn’t want to risk upsetting me?

Decent of him?

I don’t know.

The whole subject being brought up again…I’m still not sure how I feel.

I guess this is me trying to figure it out.

My next posts I want to explore polyamory.  What does it mean to me.  Is it who I am?

I need to decide two things really.

Do I still want to be (and am I capable of being) friends with this guy?

And even if the answer is no, do I still want a polyamorous lifestyle?

to be continued…

The letter I never sent

Dear Matt,

You don’t want to talk to me again? Fine. But since I had to listen to you take all of your baggage out on me on Friday night then you can at least allow me the courtesy of responding to it.

First of all, this whole thing about me sending “inappropriate texts.” Just what exactly, under the circumstances is fucking appropriate?

I said to you the other week I wanted the pair of you to just back the fuck off but you told me you’d be “really sad” if you lost my friendship, that you “loved my banter” etc.

I probably wouldn’t have contacted you at all but for your insistence on how important my friendship was to both of you and for what I mistakenly took to be genuine concern.

DH and I talked about all of this and we both came to the decision that there wasn’t going to be any more sexual contact with either you or Rose. We both felt the situation had gotten too messy for everyone involved.

I told you all this on Monday and I thought you understood.

So I fail to see what was inappropriate. Since you were unable to be specific I can only assume you just said that because you were angry.

Perhaps you hoped you could fuck with my head?

Secondly. How dare you tell me I treat DH like shit?

Do I go out and do things when he has asked me not too? NO.

Do I tell him I find him unattractive? NO.

Do I deliberately try to hurt him? NO.

Do I keep secrets from him? NO.

On the other hand…lets see.

I respect him and his wishes on matters. I not only tell him but show him how amazing and attractive I think he is. I’m honest with my feelings as he is to me.

Yes occasionally this can be painful for both of us. But because we both trust and respect each other we both know we’ll pull through things far better by telling the truth than by bullshitting each other.

And we don’t do the blame thing either…

Seems ironic that this whole business seemed to start because Rose still blamed you for her and F ending

(this is a reference to an affair Mrs Matt had two years earlier)

and now conveniently you can both blame me for spoiling her fun.

For the record; as DH tried to explain to both of you on Friday night, he was far more put off by Rose whining at you and making bitchy comments to me than by anything else.

Sure I admitted to feeling jealous at times but there’s feeling jealous and being possessive and there is a big difference between the two.

DH is his own man and it’s demeaning to him for you to even suggest that his decisions are not his own.

And as for our “lifestyle” as you called it, not floating your boat.

Your twenty years of non-monogamy and your enthusiastic participation in events with both me and DH leaves that comment looking a bit hypocritical.

Unless you meant our lifestyle of being upfront, honest and treating people with a bit of respect?

In which case you have made it very obvious that is not “your thing”.

You were right about just one thing. I am incapable of ever being your friend. You fucked that up good and proper. You want to think badly of me go ahead, but I expected so much better from you. You’ve no need to worry about me being in touch again. I’ve got nothing left to say to you anyway.

Yours

Hypatia

*

Should I have sent it after all?

I’ll never know the answer to that question. Too much time has passed.

A hard lesson

When DH got home that night I was already livid.

He phoned Rose and tried to work out what the hell was going on.  Why was she being a bitch? I f she hadn’t been happy about something why not just speak to me about it?  They started arguing.  I could hear her on the other end of the phone “yes” she said “I know she’s not well”

Okay so I was just the mad lady?

Finally DH hung up on her.

I wanted nothing more to do with it.

This wasn’t fun.

It felt immature and stupid and was hurting everyone.

We got drunk.  We called it quits tried our best to have a nice night.  Just the two of us.  Trying to remember why we wanted to be together.

We had a good thing.

Sex with friends though…its just way too messy.

It was pretty late when the phone rang.

We ignored it.  Let the machine pick it up.

It rang again and again.

Eventually we checked the machine.

It was Matt.

He sounded furious.

If we didn’t phone him back he was going to keep phoning all bloody night if needs be.

DH dialed his number.

Matt wanted to know what the fuck he thought he was doing speaking to his wife like that.

And how fucking dare I?  Tried to make out I was delusional.  DH pointed out, now wait a minute.  You keep getting in touch with her.  You’re the one giving mixed messages.

He wanted to speak to me.

He said a lot of things.  Angry things.  He laid into me good a proper

He never wanted to speak to me again.

Did he make himself clear?

Crystal.

When I hung up the phone I felt like I’d been beaten up.

*

I wrote him a big long angry letter that I never had the guts to send.

A response to one or two things he said to me that very last conversation we had.

I still have it…

You can read it in the next post…

okay…so not the end

Whilst I was at my mum’s Matt continued to phone.

He didn’t want to lose me as a friend.

He did love me “but not like that.”

Funny how someone telling you they love you can hurt so much.

I told him fine. We’d stay friends. But I wanted to no more flirting. No more sexual contact.

I went back home.

Things started to get back to normal.

The texts became more occasional from Matt and me and Rose started to get on better again.

It seemed we had come out the other end.

We were going to survive it all.

*

A friend invited me out one night and I got ridiculously drunk.

I was flattered when a cute young man began chatting me up in the bar.

I flirted outrageously, lapping up the attention. We stayed out way too late. He told me he wanted me but I played it cool. He took my number and the next day I began a furiously steamy text conversation with him.

He was only young though. He tried his best but his texts just left me feeling flat. He had none of Matt’s wit and charm. And it was Matt I was missing.

I stupidly texted both him and Rose, telling them that I had met a new text playmate but that younger men were no good.

In my mind I wanted them to know I was sooooo over Matt. Look. I don’t care. I can find another man.

Matt ignored me.

Rose sent me a bitchy reply.

She let me know that it was all my fault she never got messages like that anymore.

Because apparently I wouldn’t let DH send them.

I was utterly lost for words…

The end?

But end, it did.

If anything our last night just made all the more confused.

I felt utterly torn.  I wanted all three of us to be together but that was just crazy.  Me and Rose were already on frosty terms with each other.  Skirting around each other and both trying to pretend we were fine when in honesty I don’t think either of us were.

Really the four of us should have gotten together somewhere.  Sat down with a big bottle of wine and talked it all through, sorted it out.

Instead, my depression worsened.  My paranoia increased.  I emailed Matt and told him I couldn’t do it anymore.  I couldn’t handle the constant texts if it wasn’t going anywhere.

I shut myself away from everything including DH.  Rose continued to pursue him.  He told me he wasn’t interested but refused to be blunt with her.

He couldn’t exactly tell her he didn’t really fancy her could he?  I felt angry with him for what felt to me like a lie.

In my paranoid mind if he had slept with her but not fancied her then he had treated her badly.  If he did fancy her then he should be honest with me and just go on fucking her and stop lying to me.

He couldn’t win.

He tried to smooth things over with them during another visit.  I just felt like the three of them were ganging up on me.  I began to feel like the mad woman in the attic from Jane Ayre.  Hidden away.  Not taken seriously.

The truth was though I had started to lose my mind.

A few weeks past.

Matt was still texting, even though I’d asked him to back off.

Everything was getting to be too much.

I wanted to have nothing more to do with Matt.  It hurt too much.  But he was DH’s boss. He had to phone most days.  It was his job.

If we tried to switch off our mobiles in the evening Rose would get shirty with DH as to why he was ignoring her.

Me and DH began to argue more and more.

I felt trapped.

I couldn’t go on anymore and after one all-mighty row I just had to get away.

I left to stay at with my parents for a few days.

I needed space from the three of them.

I couldn’t get that at home.

I arrived at my folks house the next day and was still crying.

My mum wanted to know what was wrong.  I knew she was thinking the worst.  Had DH hit me?  There was no way I would allow her to think that, DH is not that kind of person at all.

I had to try and find a way of telling her the truth.

And that’s how my mother found out that her daughter was a polyamorist.

My two lovers

And so Matt came home with DH that Friday night.

I cooked us all a wonderful meal.

We flirted gently.

The wine flowed. Music played on the stereo.

For a while DH fell asleep on the couch and me and Matt sat and talked and talked. Stroking and cuddling. Nothing more.

DH woke up in the early hours.

He had been half listening, half watching Matt and I and had become aroused.

It was time for one last fling.

The three of us went through to the bedroom together and climbed into bed.

*

It was without a doubt the most satisfying, mind blowing sex I had ever had.  Warm bodies and tongues and kisses and softness.  I felt utterly loved by the two people I loved most in the world.  There was no awkwardness, no sleaziness.  Just a really pure, almost spiritual connection between the three of us.

This for me was polyamory.

Multiple loving.

We dozed snuggled up into each other until the morning came.

I wished it never had to end…

Getting complicated

I missed Matt like mad.  We hadn’t been in touch so much.  To make matters even harder Rose was texting DH constantly.  I felt jealous.

Me jealous…?

The woman who happily shared her husband with strangers.  It didn’t make any sense.

DH shared the details of his night with me, as he often did but he wasn’t the same as he’d been before.  It didn’t seem to have inspired him or recharged his batteries.

We began to fight.  He’d made the sex sound cold and impersonal and it made me worry we could become like that one day.

Rose had told Matt the full story but from what I gathered he was more resigned to it than happy about it.

Everything seemed to be going wrong.

In the end DH admitted that he hadn’t been so much attracted to Rose as turned on by the idea.

She continued to text and he showed me the messages. She was starting to get whiny if he didn’t respond straight away.

It was making me uncomfortable.

DH started trying to get her to back off but couldn’t quite seem to do it.

He told me one night that a few times during their night together he’d had to think about other things in order to get hard.

This in itself caused problems. I mean. Could he be doing the same in bed with me?

I became increasingly paranoid and distant.

And then Matt started texting again.

We had said we wanted us to remain friends.

But soon the text messages were getting flirty again.

And then steamy.

By this time he had been promoted. He was now DH’s boss.

Him and DH had to spend the next Friday working together. On our side of the country.

DH knew that I was still in love. He said he could see it in my eyes.

The whole week our text messages flew back and forth again.

We began playing online scrabble.

Teasing and flirting.

Whoever won would get to set a forfeit for the other.

I lost.

Matt told me I would have to cook him dinner…

Cheating?

The very next week DH had the opportunity. He was up their way on business. He was booked into a hotel that week but managed to wangle a dinner invite over at Matt and Rose’s place. Matt must have been informed or have gotten the message because when bedtime happened he went off upstairs on his own leaving DH and Rose on their own with the rest of the wine and the weed.

The following day DH rang me. They hadn’t “done it” but had got very very close to it. He planned to pick her up that night and take her to his hotel.

It was at this point my mental health (which as most of you know has always been a bit suspect) began to deteriorate rapidly.

I’ll never know if it was these events that “triggered” me or whether the bouts of depression that I have suffered on and off for almost all of my adult life just picked an inopportune moment to return.

After all, DH had sex with men and women before and it never floored me like this.

But was it because I was still raw after breaking up with Matt?

Did Rose somehow make me feel threatened in a way I’d not yet encountered?

I just don’t know.

I coped for a bit, but it was to get worse, much worse.

DH spent the night with her.

Matt rang me the next day. He was confused. He felt hurt that Rose hadn’t come home that night. He’d been told by Rose that her and DH were going to the cinema.

DH also rang. Yes they had sex. Yes he’d enjoyed it but he said he’d felt awkward the next morning dropping her off. She made him feel obliged to recount a “story” about the movie they never watched. This made him feel very uncomfortable.

And me too.

For us, any non-monogamy had to be fully consensual, completely honest.

DH felt like he’d been manipulated into lying to his friend.

This was not the way we liked to play…

Love messes with your head

I should never have slept with him.

Having sex with him was probably stupid enough.

We met in bar and within a few hours things had become so electric we booked into a hotel.

This was our first “date”.

Rose phoned up whilst we were in the middle of things. He explained to her we had gone to a hotel (I mean how surreal is that? Your in a bed with a guy and his wife phones and he DOESN’T lie about what he’s getting up to?)

She said “thats fine”

I wasn’t sure about that. I mean as woman I only say “fine” when things are anything but.

I have never been sure whether he was feeling guilty because she said “fine” or disappointed that she wasn’t more upset.

We didn’t spend the night together.

But we didn’t stop either.

People started to say I was “glowing”.

My best friend’s mum asked me if I’d had my hair cut?

Or had I lost weight?

You look great she said.

Sleeping with him.  Actually sleeping with him.  The intimacy of that non-sexual act. That was the killer.

We spent a whole Saturday together whilst Rose was away visiting her dad. And he said when I arrived it had to stop. It was getting too intense for him too.

That weekend we talked non stop. He cooked me dinner. We sat up all night making love and drinking wine and talking about everything and anything. We fell asleep in each others arms.

I’ve never felt anything like it.

I was utterly in love.

With two men.

It was a disaster.  And beautiful at the same time.

I emailed him that week.  I said I needed space.  That I had fallen in love and it was messing my head up.

I was starting to fall apart at the seams and it wasn’t good.

Thing were okay for a little while.

I was up their way for a lecture and thought it might be a good idea to meet up with Rose.  Make sure everything was okay.

It was.  We had a great time.  We went out drinking and falling out of bars and got on like a house on fire.

I don’t know if I was trying to get rid of my own guilt or what but I joked that since I had slept with her husband she should probably sleep with mine…